


another day dawning

by rosycheeked



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Breaking Up & Making Up, Breakup, Draco Malfoy Feels, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, POV Draco Malfoy, suicidal thoughts (very brief)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-04 20:47:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18820423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosycheeked/pseuds/rosycheeked
Summary: Morning, and Draco can’t forget, can’t close his eyes without seeinghimthere, looking so disappointed, so pitying. Draco can’t listen to the once-sweet silence without hearing the shouting.Morning, and it’s too early for regret, even though he’s slept with it already, charmed it into his bed and his heart to fill the holes left behind with cobwebs and shadows.





	another day dawning

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!
> 
> Set out to write a bit of Drarry fluff, but as usual I was incapable and instead wrote this thing.
> 
> As I said to my lovely beta, Kaitlyn_Ashryver_Galathynius, inspiration punched me in the face.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> E

Morning, and Draco wakes up in a cold bed too hard for the price he paid for it, wakes up in a world too bright for what’s in it. He wakes up and he wants to go back to sleep, where he couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t feel his head pounding and his heart longing for something it shouldn’t because men like him don’t _long_ for things. 

Morning, and Draco’s dragging himself out of bed; the house is empty, silent, and he wants to smile but his heart doesn’t remember how. He drags in a breath or two, remembering but trying to forget, trying to shake off the echoes of memories too fresh, wounds too raw. He tries to forget the days before today, the bright, happy ones where he thinks that the future is endless, with _him_ in it, where he thinks he knows exactly what tomorrow will bring. 

Morning, and Draco can’t forget, can’t close his eyes without seeing _him_ there, looking so disappointed, so pitying. Draco can’t listen to the once-sweet silence without hearing the shouting.

Morning, and it’s too early for regret, even though he’s slept with it already, charmed it into his bed and his heart to fill the holes left behind with cobwebs and shadows.

Morning, and he sips his coffee, black and so very bitter, and savors it.

…

Late morning (is it late morning? Early morning? It’s been some time, that’s all he knows), and Draco’s drifted from the kitchen to the sofa, and he’s reading but not-reading and the words are filtering through but not registering.

Late morning, and Draco thinks about how they were going to go to that new restaurant, today, the one that had opened a week before, that they’d heard about from friends and planned to have lunch there, today. He can almost taste the tang of sour-tart-sweet dressing that he’ll never get to try.

Late morning, and Draco’s mind wanders to the feeling of _his_ lips on Draco’s, the contentment curling within him, the light that lived in his veins when they were together. He knows he shouldn’t think about it, because it’ll only make him feel worse, but he can’t help it, can’t stop himself.

Late morning, and Draco realizes he loves _him_.

Late morning, and Draco wants to throw up. His breath is putrid in the back of his throat, locked there. He knows, somehow, that _he_ had loved him, too, at least until Draco had gone and said poisonous things and slammed doors and burned buildings and bridges and hearts. 

Late morning, and the only thing Draco knows is the shattering of glass against the floor, the satisfying sound of cracking plaster, the pinpricking sting of the cuts peppering his hands.

…

Mid-day, and Draco’s eyeing the bottle on the counter, miraculously untouched in the rubble of his kitchen. It’s been a while since he lost control like that.

Mid-day, and he’s left the kitchen, closed the door, but can still feel the pull of it. He can feel cool amber liquid burning on its way down his throat, he can feel the numbness of feeling nothing by choice, by force of will that he no longer has.

Mid-day, and Draco stares at the wall, the empty wall where he’d always thought he might hang something, a painting, a map, _something_ to fill up the emptiness. He never did. He stares at the wall for seconds that feel like hours, minutes that feel like years, one eternity after another, and he thinks that he’s never felt so alone.

Mid-day, and he doesn’t know what to do with himself, he needs that bottle that he’d left in the kitchen, but when he stands up to retrieve it, all he sees is _him_ in his mind’s eye, looking reproachful and impossibly disappointed.

Mid-day, and Draco has the bottle in his hand. He can’t resist. There’s no one here to stop him. There’s no one who cares, not anymore.

…

Noon, and he smashes the bottle in the sink. He can’t. He just—can’t.

Noon, and he thinks distantly that maybe _he_ would have been proud.

Noon, and all he feels is empty, lost, drifting, reaching, reaching—

…

Afternoon, and Draco _aches_ with the longing of it, the forbidden longing, the want for the mischievous glimmer in _his_ eyes, the echoes of the warmth of _his_ hand in Draco’s, the feeling of safety in _his_ arms, the feeling that he’s _loved_.

Afternoon, and Draco chokes out an apology into his voicemail, but he deletes it just as quickly because he sounds so desperate, so needy, so pathetic and broken.

Afternoon, and he _is_. 

Afternoon, and he curls up on the sofa, and tells himself again and again that he won’t cry, he _won’t_. Men like him don’t cry. They harden their hearts, they shut emotions out, they lock up their feelings in tight cases made of iron and throw them into lakes of other people’s tears. 

Afternoon, and he knows it isn’t healthy, but he tucks the happiness he’d had into cases of steel and keeps them. He curls up on the sofa, and cries, because the cobwebs are spreading onto the cases and he can’t hold himself back anymore.

Afternoon, and he’ll cry himself a lake of his _own_ tears for those cases. Screw other people, they always hurt him anyway. No one has ever stayed. No one has ever come back for him, he and his cobwebs and shadows.

Afternoon, and Draco’s mouth tastes like the dust that surrounds him.

…

Dusk, and he can’t remember the shade of grey of his mother’s eyes, but he can see _his_ eyes, his stupid brilliantly green eyes, and it feels like a betrayal.

Dusk, and who has he betrayed? His mother? His lover? His father? His friends?

Dusk, and the only person he’s betrayed is himself. The traitor. The bereft. He’s sure that _he_ has moved on. Everyone always loved _him_ too much to leave him behind, anyway.

Dusk, and he should eat but he’s not hungry, and he can’t even step in the kitchen without getting more little cuts of glass and ceramic and plaster, and instead he sits on the edge of his bed by the window, and doesn’t look out of it.

Dusk, and Draco sits and sits and stares into nothing, and he just breathes. The air fills his lungs like smoke, and he wishes he could suffocate on it, wishes it could just end all of this, wishes it could all just stop.

Dusk, and it takes Draco too long to remember that wishing for things like that is a bad thing, and even longer for him to dismiss the thought of it.

Dusk, and Draco has nothing. Nothing to do, nothing to say, nothing to live for. It’s utterly pathetic, he tells himself, that he was only living for _him_. He supposes he wasn’t, but now that he’s alone it feels like he was.

…

Evening, and he looks out the window but the lights are drowning the stars and he can’t see them anymore. When was the last time he saw the stars?

Evening, and Draco remembers lying on a hillside beside _him_ , air smelling fresh like rain and grass and spring breezes and laughing. He remembers feeling free, feeling happy. 

Evening, and Draco’s up there, that layer of illuminated darkness between the earth and the stars, that place too close to the rest of the world to see those sky-high fires burning bright, yet so close to them that if he reaches, if he reaches far enough—

Evening, and Draco falls. He was never bound for Heaven, anyway.

…

Twilight, and he can feel the weight of his father’s hand on his shoulder, the weight of the world. He can feel the slice of a too-heavy ring across his cheek, of a bruise blooming around his eye, of a hundred heavy gazes as he looks at the floor, ashamed. He can feel the heat of an argument in the moment, the satisfaction of the cutting word and the scathing tone and the slamming door. He can feel the weight of the silence afterwards.

Twilight, and the too-heavy night weighs on Draco’s shoulders like the weight of the world.

Twilight, and it must have been on autopilot that he got into bed, because the last thing he remembers is sitting on the edge of his bed and not-looking out the window at the star-less night. 

Twilight, and his face is stiff from dried tears and his body is numb from pain, outside and in.

Twilight, and he can’t remember what it feels like to smile. He only remembers the light in his veins that snuffed out too fast, like the light in _his_ eyes when he’d said—

Twilight, and Draco can remember all too clearly what he’d said. What they’d both said.

Twilight, and blissfully, he falls asleep.

…

Morning, and Draco wakes up in the same cold, empty bed, with the same too-bright light from curtains he never closed, yesterday.

Morning, and he can’t even go into his kitchen to get coffee, because he trashed it, yesterday. 

Morning, and there’s a knock on the door just as Draco’s closing his eyes to let the shadows whisper to him again, so he gets up and opens it, too tired to register that it might be anything other than a neighbor wanting to know what the loud sounds had been, yesterday.

Morning, and Draco opens the door. A door he thought he’d closed forever. He opens his front door, which opens to the (thankfully not-destroyed) living room. He opens the door, and promptly forgets how to breathe.

It’s _him_.

Morning, but not mourning, not like yesterday, all the shades of shadowy grief rolled into one, because here he is, at his door, holding of all things a bouquet of flowers. Draco has an odd urge to look over his shoulder to see if the flowers are for someone else, but he knows he’s alone.

Morning, and he’s not alone, not anymore.

Morning, and Draco looks up into brilliantly green eyes, _Harry’s_ eyes, and they’re full of stupid, fragile hope that he knows is reflected in his own.

Morning, and Draco means to lean in to take the flowers, he really does, but instead he kisses Harry, because he’s here and he came back for him, like no one else ever has.

Morning, and the light bursts through his veins again, and he’s gasping with it, the relief.

Morning, and the shadows might have been chased out by this tremulous newfound light, but the cobwebs are sticky and doubtful and untrusting and Draco will need time to be able to sweep them out.

Morning, and the cobwebs might be here to stay but so is _Harry_ , and so is hope, and so is light bright as love, for this morning and all the mornings after.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it, kudos and comments give me life, please leave suggestions so I can improve!
> 
> 'Til next time!
> 
> E


End file.
